Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present
Karl Benjamin: 1955–1961
Art Basel Miami, December 6 – December 9, 2018
Miami Beach, FL. Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present a thoughtful survey of early works by Karl Benjamin (1925–2012). The six-year span from 1955 to 1961 saw Benjamin’s work scattered with contrasting colors and geometric forms. Benjamin returned to this motif many times over the course of his career, utilizing different variations to enhance and enliven the chromatic conversations that form what the artist called “the subject matter” of painting. The use of geometric shapes and removal of all direct representation allowed Benjamin to place color at the forefront of every work.
A painter of geometric abstractions, Karl Benjamin celebrated the sheer joy of painting in works that bristle with energy and dazzle the eye. He was catapulted to art world fame as a founder of West Coast Hard Edge painting when his work appeared in the landmark 1959–60 exhibition “Four Abstract Classicists” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art. Later traveling under the title “West Coast Hard Edge” in London and Belfast, the exhibition inspired international fame for both Hard Edge and Benjamin. This exhibition marked the shift from the passionate brushwork of Abstract Expressionism to the smoother surfaces of Pop Art and Minimalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Throughout his career, Benjamin employed razor-sharp geometric forms to showcase his remarkable intuition for color relationships. He fills each canvas with meticulously orchestrated hues; his intuitive sensitivity to the peculiar union of form and color produces works that defy reason and return the viewer to the purely sensual delight of seeing. The saturated colors of these paintings are highly individualized, yet each is nuanced by its context and the presence of the other colors around it. This selection of work represents the years surrounding the pinnacle of Benjamin’s contributions to art history.
Karl Benjamin was born in Chicago in 1925. He received his BA from the University of Redlands, Redlands, CA and his MFA at Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA. He was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Visual Arts in both 1983 and 1989. His work has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions and is included in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, Israel; Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. For many years, Benjamin taught painting at Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School.
Louis Stern Fine Arts is the exclusive representative of the estate of Karl Benjamin.